﻿The Void

Limitless in terror, the fall lasted on a long enough timeline for the survival rate of everyone to drop to zero. I was a miner, as was my father, as was his father. It was back-breaking work, never knowing if it was raining or snowing, whether it was day or night, if your village still existed or not. If you were zombified, no one would know and would leave you in the depths of the overworld if they did. No one dug this far down unless in pursuit of ore. Coal and iron and gold and lapis and redstone and diamonds and emeralds. I, like all miners inevitably, grew a deep passion for this minerals. Every day could easily be my last, the threat of collapsing tunnels and zombies waiting just around the corner, poised and ready to strike. Most days I found not a thing. Cold stone walls stared me down as silence mockingly laughed. Lava flowed and taunted me as it met water, making cobblestone I was simply too eager to mine. It doesn't make sense, really, how I stubbornly refused to mine pure stone but jumped at the opportunity to mine its equal. Never have I ended an expedition for a reason other than burn wounds gained from stupidly standing on the cobble as I mined it. I never did it consciously; My mind just did so as though it were second nature. After hours upon hours of laboring work, I would collapse into the worn-out sleeping bags at the miner camps in various locations throughout the twisting tunnels of the terrible tyrant of a mine.

One day I grew tired of returning to those miserable camps.

One day I grew tired of being rushed to the surface covered in burns.

One day I grew tired of surviving.

All my life I had survived. Life is meant to be lived. To be filled with joy and grief, with anger and envy, with failure and success.So I broke the one rule I lived by: Never dig straight down.

Why not dig straight down you ask?

Because you will end up like me.

It was told to me that this rule existed because of the threat of lava and great falls. I told myself these possibilities were the life of a miner. So I grabbed the best gear in my mining camp whilst everyone was deep in sleep, and snuck away, being careful to open the aged door in such a manner that it would not groan and climbed down the stone steps three at a time. I found a nice spot to mine and started to hack away at the stone with my pickaxe.

For the first time in my life, I found coal. I found iron. I found diamonds.

For the first time in my life, these valuables meant nothing.

I did encounter lava, but I managed to put it out with a stolen water bucket. I did encounter numerous falls, but I softened my landing with the slabs of slime villagers insisted to be valuable.

But there was one fall I couldn't soften.

Bedrock, as a matter of fact, isn't always there to stop you from falling endlessly. I couldn't breathe. I had no water nor shelter. I had no food nor companion. I had no means of escape from this terrible fate. I'm still falling. I can't die. Why can't I just die?

So it is with that I write this, hoping that this journal will be recovered and my story shared amongst miners to ensure this never happens again.